flyinghouse99:Maybe I am a douche for saying this, but here goes. When I see a fat person at the gym, I try to tell myself "good for them", but does a fat person really belong in a gym? It doesn't take a whole lot to be not fat. An obese person can make huge changes by watching what they eat and working basic physical activities into their lifestyle. If you had never been on a skateboard in your life, would your first stop be the skatepark? No, you'd just get in everyone's way and put yourself in danger. Stick to your driveway until you can at least do an ollie.

Maybe the exception would be fat people going to the gym for physical rehabilitation under the watch of a personal trainer.

Maybe I am a douche for saying this, but here goes. When I see a lame troll on Fark, I try to tell myself "good for them", but does a lame troll really belong in this thread? It doesn't take a lot to not be a troll. A troll can make huge changes by not being an asshole, or at least not posting. DIAF and GTFO work too. If you had never been on a skateboard in your life, would your first stop be the skatepark? No, you'd just get in everyone's way and put yourself in danger. Stick to your driveway until you can at least do an ollie.

Maybe the exception would be trolls trying to prove a point by using clever statire. But, let's face it. This is Fark.

AustinFakir:The catch is that the potential customers don't know who they are. I know a >200 lb 5'9" woman who thinks she needs to lose 40 pounds to be at her ideal weight. Have you ever seen a 160 pound woman that height who was at her ideal weight? Wishful thinking rules the day. They really do believe in big bones, or something of that sort. Not that it would be easy to put an exact number on it. Personally, I don't know what my ideal weight is. I'm losing again, just passing my previous best and closing in on how much I weighed as a freshman in high school, but I have no idea what weight I'm shooting for. (I was already pretty chubby at thirteen.) I'll figure it out when I get closer.

I grew up referring to the Metropolitan Life Insurance weight tables. I found a copy on the internet. Metropolitan Life Insurance Tables (hope it works) I'm smack dab in the middle of that chart for my height and no one has ever called me "fat". My weigh range is 15 pounds, depending on how sick or wired I have been lately.

"Ideal" weight for another human being is not supermodel weight, photography subject weight, or some other aesthetically based metric. Since the camera adds 20 pounds (the old rule of thumb) models have had to be lighter. Unfortunately, this resulted in a kind of arms race where photogs living among already underweight women had expectations of women 20 pounds lighter than that. It resulted in some kind of arms race where 5'11" models are expected to be 115 pounds, which is frightening.

Unfortunately, a lot of guys who don't get out enough, think that women presented as "beautiful" in the media are a realistic metric for women in reality. Women in reality do things like menstruate, walk a mile without passing out, and don't look like a bag of coat hangers. We also don't wear makeup everyday, don't have stylists, and are unable to find a meatspace form of Photoshop. It might be good to recalibrate your expectations of the distaff sex.

flyinghouse99:Maybe I am a douche for saying this, but here goes. When I see a fat person at the gym, I try to tell myself "good for them", but does a fat person really belong in a gym? It doesn't take a whole lot to be not fat. An obese person can make huge changes by watching what they eat and working basic physical activities into their lifestyle. If you had never been on a skateboard in your life, would your first stop be the skatepark? No, you'd just get in everyone's way and put yourself in danger. Stick to your driveway until you can at least do an ollie.

Maybe the exception would be fat people going to the gym for physical rehabilitation under the watch of a personal trainer.

Losing weight is mostly about diet, but the gym really is a good place for fat people to work out. Overheating is a bigger issue for them, partly because they work much harder when walking or running than someone who doesn't weigh as much. Having them walk or run or ride a skateboard just rubs their face in how fat they are. I think the best thing is to bring them inside into the A/C and teach them to lift weights. Might as well start them out on something they can be as good at as any other beginner. It can be a big confidence booster to see improvements from week to week even if they aren't losing weight. That confidence and feeling of control might even carry over to how they control their eating.

Plus, long term, people who carry a lot of extra weight tend to develop knee and back problems. Teaching them to lift correctly will help them avoid hurting themselves and help them deal with those problems when they do inevitably arise.

flyinghouse99:Maybe I am a douche for saying this, but here goes. When I see a fat person at the gym, I try to tell myself "good for them", but does a fat person really belong in a gym? It doesn't take a whole lot to be not fat. An obese person can make huge changes by watching what they eat and working basic physical activities into their lifestyle. If you had never been on a skateboard in your life, would your first stop be the skatepark? No, you'd just get in everyone's way and put yourself in danger. Stick to your driveway until you can at least do an ollie.

Maybe the exception would be fat people going to the gym for physical rehabilitation under the watch of a personal trainer.

Losing weight and getting in shape are not the same thing. If they're going to drop the pounds at last, they might as well start working out. Also, in the case of severely obese people, a dramatic weight loss will result in a loss of strength - because their bodies had to be strong enough to haul all that extra mass around all the time.

From your point of view, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. All the more reason to establish a gym for the obese.

The snarky side of me wonders if they came up with the idea assuming that obese people aren't going to ever use the gym, even if it caters to them exclusively. Sign only obese people up for the gym + obese people rarely use the gym = huge profit margins.

Lifting weights while losing weight helps maintain lean body mass. Once I got past my noob gains my Big 4 lifts have essentially stalled for at least 6 months, meanwhile I'm down 88 pounds compared to 1 year ago. Having a gym like the one mentioned in the article would have helped me get over my babbies first gym autism, by which I mean feeling self-conscious working out next to bodybuilders who warmed up with my 1 rep max.

Planet Fitness was out because they only recently opened a close location, they weren't open 24 hours (I work the nightshift), and I like to deadlift.

So from one recovering fatty to the article's gym owner, good luck and godspeed, the world could use less flab.

I'm about 40 pounds heavy but pretty toned for that because I pack a lot of muscle as well as the extra fat. In fact, I work with a lady who is barely smaller than I, it's an elderly woman I help, and I gave her some of my shirts which still fit me...that fit her too. Of course when I say barely smaller, I mean visually. I outweigh her by about 70 pounds.

BMI is idiotic. I mean I guess it works for majority of people but my daughter's peditrician ALMOST said the word obese in front of my 8 year old daughter. Because her weight is 75 and her height is 4'6. No matter that since she plays 2 soccer seasons a year and 1 basketball season, her legs are hella muscular, but nooooooo the BMI SCALE IS NEVER WRONG

/practically threw a book at the doc to get her to NOT say obese in front of her//slashies are calorie free

Heist:The snarky side of me wonders if they came up with the idea assuming that obese people aren't going to ever use the gym, even if it caters to them exclusively. Sign only obese people up for the gym + obese people rarely use the gym = huge profit margins.

Litig8r:AustinFakir: The catch is that the potential customers don't know who they are. I know a >200 lb 5'9" woman who thinks she needs to lose 40 pounds to be at her ideal weight. Have you ever seen a 160 pound woman that height who was at her ideal weight? Wishful thinking rules the day. They really do believe in big bones, or something of that sort. Not that it would be easy to put an exact number on it. Personally, I don't know what my ideal weight is. I'm losing again, just passing my previous best and closing in on how much I weighed as a freshman in high school, but I have no idea what weight I'm shooting for. (I was already pretty chubby at thirteen.) I'll figure it out when I get closer.

That's a 23.6 BMI. Not exactly svelte, but not wildly out of the norm.

She'd have to put on a lot of muscle for that to be an ideal weight. At that weight she'd be built about like a typical Olympic heptathlete, maybe a little heavier. (I chose the heptathlon because it doesn't include an endurance element, and two of the six events are raw power throwing events that as individual competitions are dominated by burly athletes. You won't see women with unhealthy levels of body fat scoring well on the javelin or shot put.)

When my friend imagines her "ideal weight," she doesn't imagines herself being as powerfully built as an Olympic athlete. I know that from the way she talks about other women. I might think those women are hot, but my friend does not. For another athletic comparison, at 5'9" and 160 lbs, she'd fall somewhere in the middle of the BMI range for the US Olympic women's softball team. Those girls 1) robustly built, 2) enormously strong, and 3) not what my friend wants to look like, no matter how many men might like her like that.

I don't think anyone needs to get to their ideal weight to be healthy, or that perfection is even the right proximate goal for someone over 200 pounds, but if you use it as a reference point like my friend does, it's best not to be wildly off.

flyinghouse99:Maybe I am a douche for saying this, but here goes. When I see a fat person at the gym, I try to tell myself "good for them", but does a fat person really belong in a gym? It doesn't take a whole lot to be not fat. An obese person can make huge changes by watching what they eat and working basic physical activities into their lifestyle. If you had never been on a skateboard in your life, would your first stop be the skatepark? No, you'd just get in everyone's way and put yourself in danger. Stick to your driveway until you can at least do an ollie.

Maybe the exception would be fat people going to the gym for physical rehabilitation under the watch of a personal trainer.

Maybe I am a douche for saying this, but here goes. When I see a poor person at the bank, I try to tell myself "good for them", but does a poor person really belong in a bank? It doesn't take a lot to not be poor. A poor person can make huge changes by watching what they spend and working market labor activities into their lifestyle. If you had never been on a skateboard in your life, would your first stop be the skatepark? No, you'd just get in everyone's way and put yourself in danger. Stick to your driveway until you can at least do an ollie.

Maybe the exception would be poor people going to the bank for financial rehabilitation under the watch of a financial advisor.

Maybe I am a douche for saying this, but here goes. When I see a fat person at the gym, I try to tell myself "good for them", but does a fat person really belong in a gym? It doesn't take a whole lot to be not fat. An obese person can make huge changes by watching what they eat and working basic physical activities into their lifestyle. If you had never been on a skateboard in your life, would your first stop be the skatepark? No, you'd just get in everyone's way and put yourself in danger. Stick to your driveway until you can at least do an ollie.

Maybe the exception would be fat people going to the gym for physical rehabilitation under the watch of a personal trainer.

A Curves gym opened up near me last year, which I've been told is for overweight middle aged women. Within 2 months, a Fudge shop and a Dunkin Donuts opened up on either side of them....and this....will forever be my example illustrating supply and demand.

PainInTheASP:Frederick: I like the concept; not sure its a viable business model though. Sort of a catch-22.

I totally agree. This sort of thing may not work everywhere, but I know of a whole shiatload of Midwestern cities where they'd make out like gangbusters. Er, excuse me...fatbusters.

This is a great idea.

People are ashamed enough that they are fat. They know they are fat and they want to join a gym but have feelings of worthlessness and being judged by the fit people inside it. Irrational thinking? Yes, but that is what happens with these people and it keeps them from engaging themselves. This also provides a nice support group and and meet people who are in the same boat as you are.

AustinFakir:The catch is that the potential customers don't know who they are. I know a >200 lb 5'9" woman who thinks she needs to lose 40 pounds to be at her ideal weight. Have you ever seen a 160 pound woman that height who was at her ideal weight? Wishful thinking rules the day. They really do believe in big bones, or something of that sort. Not that it would be easy to put an exact number on it. Personally, I don't know what my ideal weight is. I'm losing again, just passing my previous best and closing in on how much I weighed as a freshman in high school, but I have no idea what weight I'm shooting for. (I was already pretty chubby at thirteen.) I'll figure it out when I get closer.

That's a 23.6 BMI. Not exactly svelte, but not wildly out of the norm.

The catch is that the potential customers don't know who they are. I know a >200 lb 5'9" woman who thinks she needs to lose 40 pounds to be at her ideal weight. Have you ever seen a 160 pound woman that height who was at her ideal weight? Wishful thinking rules the day. They really do believe in big bones, or something of that sort. Not that it would be easy to put an exact number on it. Personally, I don't know what my ideal weight is. I'm losing again, just passing my previous best and closing in on how much I weighed as a freshman in high school, but I have no idea what weight I'm shooting for. (I was already pretty chubby at thirteen.) I'll figure it out when I get closer.